TORONTO — Technically, Game 2 of the World Series started out as a pitchers’ duel.
But in reality, the Dodgers’ star-studded lineup was letting Kevin Gausman off the hook.
For six innings Saturday night, the Toronto Blue Jays’ right-hander had cruised against the Dodgers’ recently slumping lineup. Despite filling up the zone with a flurry of fastballs in hittable locations, the Dodgers’ bat remained silent, recording 17-consecutive outs after an RBI single from Will Smith in the first.
By the seventh inning, it was starting to feel like a race against the clock.
Even with Yoshinobu Yamamoto dealing, the score remained tied.
This year’s Dodgers team, however, has been able to conjure its best every time such frustrations have crept in.
And in a game-deciding sequence in the seventh, they came through again Saturday.
In the span of three batters, Smith and Max Muncy did what the rest of the offense couldn’t in the six innings prior. They squared up a pair of fastballs Gausman left over the plate, and made the veteran right-hander pay with two towering solo home runs.
At long last, it awoke the Dodgers’ lineup from its recent slumber, preceding another two-run rally in the eighth.
And when coupled with a second-consecutive complete game performance from Yamamoto, who retired his final 20 batters in a one-run masterclass, it lifted the team to a 5-1 victory at a quiet and deflated Rogers Centre, sending this World Series back to Los Angeles knotted up at one game apiece.
Yamamoto’s performance was the highlight of the night. Eleven days removed from his nine-inning, one-run, seven-strikeout gem against the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Championship Series, he ensured that, a night after the Dodgers’ biggest bullpen meltdown of these playoffs, no reliever would again be required.
The bigger development, though, might have been the Dodgers’ offensive revival.
At some point this series, the Blue Jays figure to get their bats going again. On Saturday, the Dodgers eased concerns over their ability to do the same.
That didn’t mean there wasn’t frustration along the way.
They got to Gausman early, after Freddie Freeman fouled off three two-strike pitches with two outs in the first before lining a double to right and scoring on Smith’s single — his first of three RBIs on the night.
But after that, they didn’t so much as put a runner on base against Gausman until the top of the seventh. He attacked them with plenty of fastballs in the heart of the strike zone. But all they could mostly do was hit harmless pop flies, recording an out on each of the first 12 heaters they put in play.
Finally, in the seventh, it was Smith who ultimately broke through.
After going without an extra-base hit in his first nine games of this postseason — in part, perhaps, because of the lingering side effects of his fractured hand in September — the All-Star catcher got a full-count fastball up and over the inner half of the plate. He launched it 404 feet down the left-field line, flexing his arms as it landed in the second deck.
Two batters later, Muncy produced a similar result. In a 2-and-2 count, he got an outside fastball just above the belt. He lined it the other way for his second home run this fall.
Just like that, Gasuman had been knocked out of the game. And an inning later, the Dodgers would keep piling on, turning a bases-loaded opportunity into a two-run rally after Andy Pages scored on a wild pitch and Smith beat out a potential double-play ball.
That cleared the way for Yamamoto to go the distance, becoming the first Dodgers pitcher to throw consecutive complete games in the playoffs since Orel Hershiser did three-straight times in 1988.
It took all the momentum the Blue Jays had after Game 1 of this World Series, and put it firmly back on the defending champions’ side.
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